Microsoft Tells Windows Phone 7’s App Story

As leaked documents hinted in February, the Silverlight and XNA programming environments will play major roles for third-party software developers. Microsoft previewed the software toolkits at its MIX developer conference this morning.

“I think we’ve been very clear since we first started talking about [Windows Phone 7 Series] that it represents a sea change for Microsoft,” said Charlie Kindel, manager of Microsoft’s Windows Phone App Platform and Developer Experience program, in a phone interview with Wired.com. “We’ve revamped just about every aspect of how we build phone software, ranging from how we think about customers to how we do the engineering for the product.”

Windows Phone 7 Series is Microsoft’s reboot of its mobile platform previously named Windows Mobile. Though Windows Mobile established an early lead as the smartphone operating system of choice, the platform last year suffered significant losses in market share in the mobile OS space, while Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform continued to see healthy growth.

With Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft is attempting to regain its mobile groove by offering a brand new user interface that integrates applications and multimedia into “Hubs” (i.e., software experiences organized into main categories) as well as a tidier platform for third-party developers to create and serve apps.

For development, Windows Phone 7 Series will employ XNA, a set of programming tools that makes it easier for game designers to develop games for multiple Microsoft platforms, including Windows XP, Xbox 360, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Now that Windows Phone 7 Series supports XNA, customers will be able to download and play games sold through Microsoft’s online store, Xbox Live Marketplace, which currently serves about 300 titles.

Silverlight will serve as the coding toolkit for “rich internet applications.” As Microsoft’s alternative to Adobe Flash, this is not surprising, and potentially gives Windows Phone 7 an edge over phones that don’t support Flash or Silverlight — namely, the iPhone.

To make a long story short, that means most mobile apps will be made with Silverlight, while more graphics-intensive 3D games will most likely be developed with XNA.

“Our focus is on making the tools friction-free for developers to get in as easily as possible,” Kindel said.

Microsoft also detailed the experience of its application store, dubbed Windows Phone Marketplace. Developers will be required to provide trial versions of their applications so customers can try out apps before deciding to purchase them. And similar to what practically everyone is doing with app stores, developers will receive a 70 percent cut of each sale, while Microsoft will take 30 percent.

Microsoft disclosed a lengthy list of partners that have signed up to develop for Windows Phone 7 Series. Notable developers include Associated Press, EA, Foursquare, Namco, Sling, Shazam, Pandora, Netflix and Pageonce.

As for usability, Microsoft’s phones will support about the same touch gestures seen on the iPhone: pinch or double tap to zoom, and swipe in a certain direction to pan, for example. Also similar to the iPhone, Windows Phone 7 Series phones supports push-notification. Dubbed “Microsoft Notification Service,” the service enables third-party apps to send updates to a phone’s home screen and display status messages even when the actual application is not running in the background. Some core integrated features such as the phone and music player will be able to run in the background, but third-party apps cannot, according to Kindel.

Despite those similarities to the iPhone, the general hub-based UI is a major difference from any smartphones on the market. Microsoft will provide a basic framework of hubs on Windows Phone 7 Series’ start screen: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office. Developers can inject their apps into Microsoft’s standard hubs, and they’ll also have the option to create their own hubs, according to Kindel.

The brand new hub UI should make Windows Phone 7 Series’ app story interesting, said Michael Gartenberg, partner of technology consulting firm Altimeter Group, who attended the MIX keynote this morning.

“We’ll see how the market reacts and how consumers react because it’s a very different user interface,” Gartenberg said. “They’re going to have to justify the differentiation for consumers and developers, and I think there’s going to be a longer story that needs to be told here.”